OLIVIER MESSIAEN: Quatuor pour la fin du temps 1. Liturgie de cristal ("Liturgy of crystal") 2. Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps ("Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time") 6. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes ("Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets") 7. Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps ("Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time") enhakē (www.enhake.com) is an emerging classical chamber ensemble comprised of members from South Korea and the United States. Drawing its name from the Seminole (Creek) word for "sound" or "call," enhakē (pronounced in-HA-kee) is committed to bringing sublime chamber music to its audience with a sincere respect and love for the score.

Since its inception in 2007 at Florida State University, enhakē has quickly established itself by performing and participating in the most prestigious competitions throughout the United States. In 2008 enhakē was awarded first prize at the 3rd International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition (Boston, Massachusetts) and a Judges’ Special Recognition Prize at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition (Columbia, Missouri). The same year, enhakē made its Carnegie Hall (New York City) debut featuring John Mackey’s Breakdown Tango to critical acclaim at Weill Recital Hall. The group is also a recipient of the University Musical Association Award and Academic Conference Grants at FSU. enhakē was featured in the 2008 OK Mozart Festival Showcase Series (Bartlesville, Oklahoma) and has given Guest Artist Recitals as well as master classes at the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City University and Valdosta State University (Georgia). In 2008 Fall, the group appeared in An Evening of Music and Dance in collaboration with the Tallahassee Ballet Company.

Jayoung Kim, a native of South Korea, is a doctoral candidate in cello performance at Florida State University (Tallahassee), where she studies with Gregory Sauer, and where she has served as principal cellist with the Florida State Symphony. She earned her BM degree from Ewha University in Seoul, receiving the Ewha Honor Scholarship, and performed as soloist and principal cellist with the Ewha University Orchestra. Ms. Kim received her MM degree from the Eastman School of Music, studying under Alan Harris. As a member of Trio dell’arte, she was invited to participate in the Young-San Artist Series, and also has attended the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland, and theTexas Music Festival in Houston. She has performed in master classes with Andres Diaz, Edward Aaron, Thomas Landschoot and Lynn Harrell.

Described as a “tour de force” by Classical Voice of North Carolina, clarinetist Wonkak Kim consistently dazzles with playing that is “virtuosic and stirring” (Journal de Morges, Switzerland). The Korean native began studying clarinet at age fifteen, and since has concertized throughout the United States, South Korea and Europe, and has appeared as soloist with nearly a dozen orchestras, including recent performances with the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic and the Central Florida Symphony. A prizewinner of numerous national and international competitions, Mr. Kim has appeared in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and Constitution Hall. His major teachers have been Donald Oehler and Frank Kowalsky.

Eun-Hee Park is pursuing a Doctoral degree in FSU’s Accompanying/Chamber Music program under the tutelage of Carolyn Bridger. Ms. Park received her MM degree with high honors at Wanda L. Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University and her BA degree at Mesa State College (Colorado) where she was graduated summa cum laude, and she also has participated in the Corsi Internazionali di Musica (University of Urhino, Italy). She has competed internationally and received numerous scholarships and awards both in Korea and the United States, including winner of Young Artists Competition OK, and a special prize for performance of contemporary music at the Competition Internationale in Santa Fe, New Mexico. ) She has played in master classes for Margo Garrett, David Koreyaar, Renato Premezzi, Daniel Epstein, Daniel Pollack, Robert Marler, Tanya Bannister, Peter Miyamoto and the Merling Trio.

M. Brent Williams joined the faculty of Valdosta State University in the fall of 2008, where he also serves as principal second violin of the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra and performs with the faculty string quartet. He is completing his DMA in violin performance at FSU, while also earning the Music of the Americas graduate certificate. He received his MM from FSU as a teaching assistant/assistant to the director of the chamber music program, and he earned is BMA from the University of Oklahoma, where he received the Doris Bratton Scholar Award, Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Award, and OU Scholars Award. Mr. Williams is the assistant concertmaster of Tallahassee Symphony and Sinfonia Gulf Coast Orchestra (Destin, Florida). His principal teachers include Beth Newdome, Dr. Gary Kosloski, Byron Tauchi, Michael Ma, Dr. Janna Lower, Wayne Crouse, Eliot Chapo, and Chris Wu.

Ohio-born composer John Mackey (b.1973) is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music (BFA) and the Juilliard School (MM), where he studied compostion with Donald Erb and John Corigliano respectively. He has received numerous commissions and awards and his works enjoy frequent international performances, including the recent presentation of his Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra by Charlotte Mabrey with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Mackey was Music Director of the Parsons Dance Company from 1999-2003, and Breakdown Tango (aka, Dementia) was composed in 2000 to fill a commission for the company -- the corresponding ballet is called Promenade. About the piece the composer observes: "This work (called 'darkly dramatic' by the New York Times, and 'an appealing, and at times wonderfully trashy piece' by The Clarinet Magazine), has a virtuostic beginning and ending, with a peculiar tango sandwiched in the middle." Breakdown Tango provides the source material for an orchestral work called Redline Tango, and its wind ensemble version won both the 2004 Walter Beeler Memorial Composition Prize and the 2005 ABA/Ostwald Award from the American Bandmasters Association.

Composer Peter Schickele (b. 1935) is best known as the Grammy® Award-winning satirist responsible for the hilarious fictional composer, P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742?), which he created during the mid-1960s at about the same time he left his teaching position at the Juilliard School. But in addition to his humorous parodies Schickele has a varied catalog of original orchestral works and chamber music, and he has composed for stage, television and film, including the soundtrack for the 1972 science fiction film, Silent Running. The Quartet (composed 1979-1982, published 1984) has become a concert favorite, and its intricate, playful, and sometimes jazzy style showcases the performers technical mastery while never failing to delight audiences.

Argentine composer Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992) pretty much single-handedly transformed his homeland's national dance, the tango, into a new style aptly called nuevo tango ("new tango"), by infusing the traditional dance form with characteristics of jazz, and incorporating contrapuntal techniques and formal elements adapted from his classical studies. It is estimated that Piazzolla wrote over 3,000 pieces, and recorded about 500 of them himself! Piazzolla included Oblivión in his soundtrack score composed for Marco Bellocchio's 1984 film, Enrico IV ("Henry IV"), and it is one of Piazzolla's more traditional (i.e., less jazzy and/or Bartókian) tangos, and one which has become among his most frequently performed and recorded pieces, in varying instrumental arrangements.

Among the most significant composers of the 20th Century, France’s Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was also a noted organist, music theorist, and extremely influential teacher. He entered the Paris Conservatory in 1919 (at age 11), was organist at Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris from 1931 to 1978, and joined the faculty of the Paris Conservatory in 1941. Just prior to this latter appointment, Messiaen, who had been serving in the French army's medical auxiliary, was imprisoned in a concentration camp when the Germans occupied France in 1940, and it was while he was a prisoner that he composed and first performed his best-known work, Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the End of Time"). The instrumentation was determined by the players who were available (also prisoners), and Messiaen, a devout Roman Catholic, states in the score that the work is directly inspired by passages from the Biblical Book of Revelation:

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire, and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and swore by him that liveth for ever and ever that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished.

Of its eight movements, the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th use the full quartet, while the others use one to three instruments from the ensemble. Like most of Messian's works, the Quartet is rhythmically complex, and the melodies and harmonies make use of non-traditional scales which deliberately avoid definite tonal centers. Messiaen considered himself as much an ornithologist as a musician, and birdsong often plays a key role in his music, as in the first movement which includes imitations of blackbirds (in the clarinet) and nightingales (in the violin). The unison instruments in the 6th movement are meant to imitate gongs and trumpets, and the movement illustrates the composer's fascination with augmented and diminishing rhythmic patterns. The 2nd and 7th movements share thematic materials, and the rainbows that Messiaen describes as accompanying the angel were more than mere fancy for the composer--he had a benign neurological condition called synaesthesia which caused him to experience colors when he heard music.